Skyline International: Twitter UAE Office Must Be Closed

SkyLine International expressed its high concerns regarding the reports of the United Arab Emirates role in detaining and torturing Saudi dissidents which recently resulted in the death of one of them.

The report, published in a number of Gulf and Arab newspapers regarding the role of UAE in arresting Saudi dissidents during 2017-2018 through hacking the regional Twitter office in the Middle East, which is dangerous and has put dozens of bloggers at risk.

Skyline International reported that a number of Twitter employees in UAE helped Saudi authorities to track some dissidents accounts on Twitter and allow them to access their accounts and get their personal information.

The reports have revealed that Twitter employees were able to know the owners of some accounts with nicknames to protect their lives and publish their opinions freely. The writer “Turki Al-Jasser” who was killed a few days after his arrest is one of the victims as well as “Marwan Al-Marisi” and “Hassan al-Maliki, whose fates are not known yet.

The writer, Turki bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser, published his opposition tweets in Twitter through an account called “Kashkol”. In addition, Marwan al-Marisi was publishing his writings through an account called “Samadhi” which is famous for defending the detainees in the kingdom. Al-Abbas Hassan Al-Maliki and Mohammed Al-Baghdadi were also arrested after being accused of being in contact with the account of “prisoners of conscience.”

The news said that the so-called former Saudi electronic army chief, Saud Al-Qahtani, was able to penetrate Twitter office by employing people from his staff and access the data of some Saudi human rights activists, which led to their detention and enforced disappearance.

Skyline International is immediately asking Twitter to close its regional office in the UAE and to launch a thorough investigation into the privacy violations that led to the killing and arrest of a number of activists and to hold accountable anyone involved in the case.

Skyline also asked Twitter directors not allowing twitter to be an investment by some of Saudi figures and to give them an access to obtain private information about people on Twitter in a way that violates all domestic and international laws, and the laws of Twitter itself, which claims to protect the privacy of its users.

Skyline International urged Twitter to respond clearly to the real reasons why it opened a regional office for the Middle East in the UAE, despite the black record of human rights of the country, which is documented by international human rights organizations.

Skyline International also questioned the ability of the UAE to penetrate technology and its reliance on different advanced programs that violate the privacy of people through a famous program called ” Flacon’s Eye”. The program monitors and records the movement of people with visible and invisible cameras planted secretly in offices, institutions and mosques, as well as penetrates citizens’ devices.